26-05-2025
Nearly half of British teenagers don't live with both birth parents as family breakdowns reach record levels
Family breakdowns are at the highest level since records began with almost half of teenagers not living with both natural parents by the age of 14, according to a new study.
An astonishing 45 per cent of British teens now do not live with both parents - almost double the official figure of 24 per cent of families who are headed by a lone parent.
Official estimates for family breakdown have been 'dramatically understated' as they didn't factor in parents who have re-partnered and those with young children who split later, the study claims.
Researchers found that the level of family breakdown in Britain has increased fivefold since the 1970s and has now reached 'epidemic proportions'. They warn that as the likelihood of familial collapse is intergenerational 'these figures will worsen in future years'.
The study, by the Marriage Foundation think tank, says: 'Some level of family breakdown is inevitable and even welcome. But 45 per cent? This should be a national scandal.
'This figure is also roughly double the ONS figure usually cited where 24 percent of all families in 2023 were headed by a lone parent. This dramatically understates the real level of family breakdown.'
Official figures from the 1970s show just eight per cent of families then were headed by a lone parent. However the think tank's analysis of data from the Millennium Cohort Study - a long-term study of about 19,000 people born in the UK in 2000-02 - found this has now reached 45 per cent.
The key driver of family breakdown is not divorce, which is now at its lowest level since 1970, but the collapse of unmarried families with children, the study found.
Married parents account for 85 per cent of families that remain intact when their children are teenagers and make up just 30 per cent of families that have broken down.
'Two thirds of family breakdown already comes from parents who never married,' the research says, adding: 'This proportion will increase.'
The rising level of family breakdown has been 'camouflaged' by falling divorce rates and the overall level of lone parenthood remaining steady in official statistics since 2000, it adds.
The study, titled We need to talk about marriage - finding reliable love, warns that family breakdown is the 'number one predictor' of teenage mental health problems, poor exam results and lower self-esteem, with these problems likely to worsen if levels of family breakdown continue at current rates.
Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation's research director and the author of the study, said: 'The level of family breakdown in the UK is at epidemic proportions and is set to get worse with all the knock-on effects on those affected and in societal costs.
'Yet no politicians or policy makers are talking about this. So why this deafening wall of silence?
'Those in power might be blissfully ignorant of the facts, with official stats massively underestimating the scale of the problem in the UK, but more likely senior politicians, who are overwhelmingly married, don't want to be seen as 'preaching' about the construct or make-up of families.'
